He’s been around longer than James Bond or Spider-Man, and starred
in more movies than both of them combined. The latest Godzilla opens in
theaters this weekend, and if you’re in the mood for giant rampaging
monsters, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Crackle have quite a selection for you,
including a variety of classic Godzilla movies.

Gojira (Godzilla)

★★★★★

The one that began it all is no mere cheesy monster movie. Revived in theaters a decade ago, the
original, uncut, subtitled Japanese version of Gojira (1954) also streams on Hulu Plus. Director Ishiro Honda had been an assistant director to none
other than Akira Kurosawa. The great actor Takashi Shimura (Seven
Samurai, Ikiru) has a more significant role, bringing more dignity and
history to the movie. It’s really about the fear and rage that the
Japanese people must have felt after the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The U.S. distributor chopped some 40 minutes from it, added
some footage of Raymond Burr, and released it in 1956 as Godzilla: King
of the Monsters. That version was a success and introduced American fans
to the great, giant monster, but this original version puts that release
to shame.

Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster

★★★☆☆

Of all the sequels, Godzilla vs. the Smog
Monster (1971) is perhaps the most memorable. Roger Ebert even
referenced it in an old review of Godzilla 1985 as his favorite of the
series, and it’s on Hulu for everyone, no Hulu Plus subscription required. It has the most blatant pro-environmental message of all the
films; our excessive pollution has resulted in the creation of a “smog
monster,” which is more of a sludge monster, really. The best part of
this movie—which is absolutely cheesy—is its opening theme song,
the unbearable but heartfelt earworm “Save the Earth.” The Japanese
title is Gojira vs. Hedora.

The Blob

★★★☆☆

Here’s an interesting twist on the giant monster movie. Available on Hulu Plus, The Blob
(1958) starts as a small, weird object from space, and then gets bigger
and bigger as it feeds, soon turning into a giant, freaky all-consuming
gelatinous thing. Its rampage climaxes at a movie theater with a crowd
of people watching a scary movie! The visual effects on this full-color
feature have hardly dated, and it’s not easy to see just how they were
done—the movie still has some magic. The big deal about The Blob,
however, is that it features the acting debut of 28-year-old Steve
McQueen, playing a teenager. He brings some tough, Method-type
performing to the movie, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. directed.

King Kong (1976)

★★★☆☆

John Guillermin’s King Kong (1976) has nothing on the original 1933
version or the 2005 Peter Jackson remake, but it’s still not too bad, and unlike those other two it’s streaming on Netflix. In keeping with its times, it updates the story from a
filmmaking expedition to an oil-finding expedition. On a ship heading
for a mysterious island that could be rich in oil, a paleontologist,
Jack (Jeff Bridges), stows away to get a look at things for himself. A
shipwrecked actress, Dwan (Jessica Lange, making her movie debut),
somehow shows up as well. Of course, they discover more than just oil.
Here Kong climbs the World Trade Center, rather than the Empire State
Building, because it reminds him of home. Charles Grodin plays an evil
oil executive.

Piranha

★★★★☆

It’s not exactly a giant monster movie, but it’s in the same spirit.
Under the tutelage of Roger Corman, director Joe Dante made this
lightweight riff on Jaws, with a bunch of mutated piranha getting loose
in a lake, situated right next to a summer camp full of kids. Streaming on Netflix, Piranha
(1978) isn’t as media-savvy or as satirical as Dante’s later works would
be, but it’s just as much fun. The effects are not exactly
state-of-the-art, but the inventive combination of quick movements,
sinister, chittering sound effects, and red billowing clouds in the
water works amazingly well. The movie includes genre icons Kevin
McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and Barbara Steele (Black
Sunday) as well as Corman regulars Dick Miller and Paul Bartel. Future
director John Sayles wrote the screenplay.

Maximum Overdrive

★★★☆☆

What giant monsters hadn’t yet been done? Trucks! Author Stephen King
actually directed Maximum Overdrive (1986), his one and only attempt
behind a movie camera. Streaming on Netflix, the film is based on the short story “Trucks” from King’s Night
Shift collection (which also spawned five other movies). Emilio Estevez
leads the cast of characters stranded at a truck stop diner when
machines—specifically, big 18-wheelers—come to life and start
threatening the humans. Absolutely ridiculous and impossible
to take seriously, Maximum Overdrive has gained a reputation as a camp classic. King even enlisted rock band AC/DC to record new music for the
movie. Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington, and Yeardley Smith co-star.

Tremors

★★★★☆

The twist with the giant monsters in Ron Underwood’s Tremors (1990)
is not that they can step on you, but simply that you can never see
where they’re going to attack next. The monsters here are giant
underground worms that follow vibrations on the surface to find their
next meal. Playing a couple of local cowboys, stars Kevin Bacon and Fred
Ward are funnier and more likeable characters than this kind of movie
ordinarily merits. Underwood and his writers continually invent new
ideas to go with the worms, such as the scramble to find safe ground (go
higher? Find some concrete?) as well as a couple of redneck characters
with their own personal arsenal. The movie is a strong mix of funny and
exhilarating, and makes excellent use of wide-open spaces and small-town
mentality. Tremors and its three sequels stream for free on ad-supported Crackle.

The Host

★★★★★

Available on Netflix, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), from Korea, is arguably the greatest
giant monster movie since the original Godzilla. Song Kang-ho (Memories
of Murder) plays Park Gang-du, a sad-sack single dad who runs a snack
stand by the Han River. In an incredible shot, he and a throng of
onlookers observe as a strange sac-like thing drops into the river, and
emerges as a full-blown, rampaging monster. To make matters worse, the
beast kidnaps Park’s crafty young daughter. The visual effects, created
by San Francisco’s The Orphanage, are great, but like all the best
monster movies, The Host is really about other things: unemployment,
pollution, modern food, the government, the military, and mob mentality—in other words, things that are really scary.

Monsters

★★★★☆

The director of the new Godzilla, Gareth Edwards, made this earlier
film for a fraction of the budget, but with some of the same touches. Streaming on Netflix,
Monsters (2010) is about a jaded journalist, Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), who is
ordered to escort his boss’s pretty daughter, Samantha Wynden (Whitney
Able), through a mysterious infected zone in Mexico. It’s
a road movie romance, like an updated version of It Happened One Night,
except that it features giant alien monsters. Edwards focuses squarely
on the characters, and the weirdness is sometimes only barely glimpsed or
suggested—at least until the incredible ending. It may have too much
talking for monster fans, but viewers looking for something more thoughtful
will enjoy it.

Trollhunter

★★★★☆

An import from Norway, Andre Ovredal’s Trollhunter (2010) is one of
the many found-footage horror movies inspired by The Blair Witch
Project, but this one, which streams on Netflix, is different. Rather than a ghost or a witch or a
demon, it’s about (you guessed it!) a giant troll. Three young filmmakers team up
with the title troll hunter, played by Norwegian comedian Otto
Jespersen. They slowly learn about the real-life existence of trolls and
the measures that must be taken to hide them from the populace. The
movie cooks up an incredible amount of troll lore as well as displaying
a wonderful sense of humor; one great joke involves a power station
wherein the employees are unaware that their grid runs in a circle and
doesn’t go anywhere (it’s really a giant electric fence).

What’s New on Netflix

Anatomy of a Murder

Bang the Drum Slowly

Emperor

From Dusk Till Dawn

Pain & Gain

Much Ado About Nothing

Ravenous

Return of the Dragon

To comment on this article and other TechHive content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.

Jeffrey has been a working film critic for more than 14 years. He first fell in love with the movies at age six while watching "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and served as staff critic for the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 through 2003.